Suspect in Texas Veteran’s Killing Was Hospitalized

DALLAS — Eddie Ray Routh, the former Marine corporal accused of killing Chris Kyle, an author and retired Navy SEAL sniper, had been released from a veterans hospital here four days before the shootings over the objections of his parents, Mr. Routh’s court-appointed lawyers said.

Mr. Routh, 25, and his relatives told the police in recent weeks and months that he had been deeply troubled and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to court documents. He had a series of run-ins with the authorities in parts of North Texas, and had threatened to kill himself at least once, police records show.

Mr. Routh had been undergoing treatment at the Dallas V.A. Medical Center and Green Oaks Hospital, a psychiatric center in Dallas. On Jan. 24, Mr. Routh was released from the Dallas V.A. center but soon returned, and he was again released on Jan. 29, said his lawyers, R. Shay Isham and J. Warren St. John. On both occasions, Mr. Routh’s father and mother, Raymond and Jodi Routh, had protested his release, the lawyers said.

“She was begging them not to let him loose,” Mr. Isham said.

Four days after Mr. Routh’s release, Mr. Kyle, 38, and a friend, Chad Littlefield, 35, took Mr. Routh to a rural shooting range to help the young man, one of the ways Mr. Kyle often assisted troubled veterans. For reasons that remain unclear, the authorities said, Mr. Routh turned a semiautomatic handgun on the two men, shooting both multiple times and fleeing in Mr. Kyle’s truck before he was captured hours later near his home in the Dallas suburb of Lancaster.

A spokeswoman for the federal Department of Veterans Affairs said that without a signed privacy waiver from Mr. Routh, they could not disclose any protected health information.

Mr. Routh remained in custody at the Erath County Jail in Stephenville on $3 million bond. Mr. Isham said that on Tuesday, Mr. Routh refused to meet with his mother and Mr. St. John, unless he was given a cigarette. “He’s trying to play an angle — ‘I give you something, you give me something,’ ” Mr. Isham said. “He wouldn’t see anybody.”

Eleven days after graduating from high school in the nearby town of Midlothian, Mr. Routh began boot camp in June 2006 at age 18. In his senior yearbook, there is a photo of him talking with a recruiter. “I want to be one of the few and the proud,” he was quoted as saying, when asked why he was joining the Marines.

Mr. Routh served nearly four years, becoming a corporal shortly before he was discharged in June 2010. He was in Iraq in September 2007, and was part of a disaster-relief deployment to Haiti after the earthquake there in January 2010.

Since then, Mr. Routh appeared to be struggling, and his relatives seemed concerned about his mental state. Eight months before the shootings, Mr. Routh’s mother called the Lancaster police in May to report a burglary and appeared to name her son as the suspect. Nine pill bottles were taken, according to the police report. In September, the Lancaster police returned to the house after Mr. Routh threatened to kill himself and had become upset when his father told him he was going to sell his gun.

Court documents suggest that Mr. Routh may have become fixated with Mr. Kyle’s black Ford truck, because he told his sister, Laura Blevins, and her husband that he had killed the two men and had “traded his soul for a new truck.” But the documents also make clear that Mr. Routh was paranoid. “He said they were out shooting target practice and he couldn’t trust them so he killed them before they could kill him,” his sister’s husband, Gaines Blevins, told the authorities, according to court documents. “He said he couldn’t trust anyone anymore (and) everyone was out to get him.”

After a search of the house, Mr. Routh’s cellphone, a box of 9-millimeter ammunition and paraphernalia for smoking marijuana were seized.

The funeral for Mr. Littlefield will be Friday at 2 p.m. at First Baptist Church of Midlothian. A memorial service for Mr. Kyle will be held Monday at 1 p.m. at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, according to his Facebook page.

A version of this article appears in print on February 8, 2013, on page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Suspect in Texas Veteran’s Killing Was Hospitalized. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe